Heist! is an in-depth look at 10 of South Africa's most audacious heists.
From the 1996 'burning man' case, where four security guards were burnt alive in their armoured vehicle after a ferocious fight-back against highly trained mercenaries, to the 2016 robbery of a cash centre in Witbank, where a gang made off with almost R107 million after impersonating police officers, this is an impeccably researched reconstruction of an endemic crime phenomenon that some analysts warn could bring South Africa to its knees.
Using the information gleaned from thousands of pages of court documents and press reports, as well as interviews with scores of police officers, crime-intelligence agents, prosecutors defence lawyers, researchers, journalists, security guards and the criminals themselves Heist! gives unprecedented insight into a type of crime that increased by a staggering 49 per cent in the first eight months of 2017 alone.
As informative and thought-provoking as it is distressing, this is a book by an investigative journalist at the top of her game.
Anneliese Burgess is an award-winning investigative journalist who has spent more than 20 years reporting for radio and television. Starting out as a specialist producer for the SABC's Truth Commission Special Report, she later became a founding member of the broadcaster's flagship current-affairs show, Special Assignment. After 12 years at the programme - first as a producer and later as co-executive producer and anchor, she reinvented herself as a leading crisis communication specialist, handling, among other cases, the Oscar Pistorius trial on behalf of the athlete's family. This book has allowed her to go back to her roots as a journalist and to investigate the underbelly of South African society.